Relational Aesthetics

A new translation, with a new foreword, of Nicolas Bourriaud's landmark 1998 work of art theory.

First published in 1998, Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics laid out a thesis for art’s turn toward participation, experience, and the whole of human relations. Now, over twenty years after its original release, this landmark work has been updated with a new translation by Denyse Beaulieu and a new foreword by the author.
 
Where does our current obsession for interactivity stem from? After the consumer society and the communication era, does art still contribute to the emergence of a rational society? Nicolas Bourriaud attempts to renew our approach to contemporary art by getting as close as possible to the artists’ works, and by revealing the principles that structure their thoughts: an aesthetic of the interhuman, of the encounter, of proximity, of resisting social formatting.
 
The aim of Relational Aesthetics is to produce the tools that enable us to understand the evolution of today’s art. We meet Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Louis Althusser, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Félix Guattari, along with most of today’s practicing creative personalities.

French art critic, theoretician, and curator Nicolas Bourriaud (born 1965) was a cofounder and codirector of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2000–2006), Gulbenkian Curator for Contemporary Art at Tate Britain, and director of the l'École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He is currently the artistic director of Montpellier Contemporain, a new institution based in Montpellier, France, and dedicated to the contemporary arts. He is the author of the landmark publication Relational Aesthetics, first published in 1998, and still inspirational today for many artists, curators, and art professionals worldwide.